


What Guy Is This Again?

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Everyone Thinks They're Together, M/M, Mackie Knows What's Up, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 09:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14518017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It’s early and the jet lag is making Chris’ ears short-circuit, clearly, because he could’ve sworn Mackie just said–-wait, what? “You think–-? Dude. Oh man, no. Come on.” He starts giggling, the kind of dumb, uncontrollable laugh that gets him pitched over, knocks his head into smoked glass. “Seb’s not my boyfriend. God, what is this, seventh grade?”





	What Guy Is This Again?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Families, friends, or others think the characters are involved when they’re really not.

“What I don’t understand is how you ever let that guy out of your sight.” **  
**

Chris rubs his eyes, leans his head against the back of the seat. “What guy is this again?”

Mackie does that thing with his face that shouts you’re a moron. “Uh, duh. Seb.”

It’s early and the jet lag is making Chris feel like he could levitate, a sleepy, nonsensical balloon drifting out over the Tokyo streets. He’s been up so long he isn’t sure what week it is, much less what day, and normally, he’d been all in on playing along with Mackie’s bullshit, but today’s a rest day and there’s a big, beautiful bed up ahead at some swanky hotel that’s hollering his name and as much as he likes Seb, he does, he’s not really up to having some weird, existential conversation about the dude’s bad habit of ignoring crosswalks and wandering willy-nilly into tense airport traffic. So he almost got splattered on a taxi windshield just now; not a great way to greet Japan, ok, but nothing they all haven’t seen at least a half a dozen times before. Seb just gets antsy on airplanes–any time he has to sit still for more than 20 minutes, really–and he has these random and semi-dangerous spurts of energy when he’s finally free of the cabin, the jetway, the stale airport air. It’s a thing with him. Everybody knows it. Even the handlers have stopped freaking out about it. Ok, no, they still freak out, but there’s less shrieking about it and more eyerolling. A lot of eyerolling. Like Seb’s a big, recalcitrant kid that makes them crazy but he’s still their kid, you know?

“Since when is it my responsibility to babysit Seb?”

Mackie spreads his hands, shrugs. “I mean, hey, it’s your call. But if my boyfriend who makes a living from his pretty face kept hurling himself in front of cars on my watch, I don’t know, I think I’d strap him to my side anytime we got near a two-lane, you know.”

It’s early and the jet lag is making Chris’ ears short-circuit, clearly, because he could’ve sworn Mackie just said–wait, what? “You think–dude. Oh man, no. Come on.” He starts giggling, the kind of dumb, uncontrollable laugh that gets him pitched over, knocks his head into smoked glass. “Seb’s not my boyfriend. God, what is this, seventh grade?”

That gets him an eyebrow. A smug one. “Really?”

“Of course really! Fuck, man. Where are you even getting this from?”

“Reliable sources. Like my own two damn eyes.”

The car rumbles over something, the smooth sway of the town car replaced by something jarring, a jolt. “Macks, honestly, I don’t know what you think you’re seeing, but man, it’s not there. We’re not–I mean”–the back of Chris’ neck feels hot, the sleepy cotton of his brain suddenly racing–“that isn’t a thing, honestly. We give each other shit, that’s all. He’s like that with everybody. He’s like that with you.”

Mackie’s eyes narrow behind his sunglasses and he looks more than a little amused. Ok, he looks like he’s two shakes from busting a gut, but he keeps it together. “Uh huh,” he says. “No, no, man. He doesn’t look at me like I’m made outta unicorns.”

“What?”

“Unicorns?” Mackie says to himself. “Nah. More like a really big cinnamon bun, maybe. One of those gross Cinnabon things he’s in love with.”

Chris’ mind is doing loops like a roller coaster on acid and his heart–oh, his big, dumb stupid heart is doing fucking somersaults, falling over itself with clueless joy, and this is not how he thought he’d be spending his first ever 20 minutes in Tokyo, tripping into the kind of schmoopy bullshit he only allows himself when he’s alone, the darkness settled around him, dreams at the tips of his fingers, only when he allows himself to tune into the pleasant hum of what-ifs, of possibilities, that sneak into his thoughts when good sense and logic and heteronormative bullshit have gone off duty for the day. No way, he thinks. No fucking way.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been having trouble motivating myself to write. Not because I don’t want to, but because once I finish a fic, I have a hard time getting going on the next thing and accepting that it may not be done for a while. Or may not go anywhere at all.
> 
> So, inspired by an artist I heard speak at a recent conference, I’m going to try this: pulling a random prompt from [this generator](http://bleep0bleep.tumblr.com/prompts) every morning and running with it for 25 minutes. That’s it. As the artist said, creativity is a muscle and these little guys will be my morning workout– a mimosa for my addled brain to get it up and going before I head into work– the results of which I’ll post here.
> 
> Some of these seeds may grow into full-grown fics. Some may be content to live as they are. We shall see.


End file.
